Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91

Vol. XXXI No. 1, April 16-30, 2021

A Guest Editor to pay tribute to our Founder

by The Editor

It is two years since our founder S. Muthiah left this world. But he continues to be recalled almost every day by those who value our city’s history and heritage. Certainly, for us at Madras Musings, he is a living presence, challenging our creativity, spurring us to put our best foot forward and above all ensuring we strive to continue to maintain the standards that he set in the bringing out of this magazine.

And so when it came to an issue commemorating two years of his passing, the chief question that faced us was about what we could present in it. We had carried enough tributes in the first issue after he passed on and then once again in the first anniversary edition. That was when the idea came that we could probably have a guest Editor. And who better than Ranjitha Ashok who for several years worked very closely with S. Muthiah? Not only had she collaborated with him on books but she had also together with Biswajit Balasubramaniam who did the sketches, contributed a column titled A-Musing which appeared on the front page of Madras Musings. These were eventually compiled and released as a book.

Ranjitha gamely accepted the invitation and under her capable leadership, this issue is dedicated to several authors who were encouraged to write by the Chief himself. This is just a selection and not a comprehensive list and we did decide to restrict it to those who had published at least one book. This lot had along with several others emerged from the furnace that was S Muthiah, rather like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and gone on to higher things. Mind you, it was not easy to qualify when the Chief was evaluating – he disliked use of adverbs and words like ‘very’ were most likely to be axed. He had other fetishes – numbers one to ten had to be written that way and from 11 onwards you could use numerals. He hated it when people wrote referring to themselves as ‘one’. And Indian words when in plural had to be hyphenated – like dubash-es. It was all rather complicated and these were only the first steps. Thereafter you had to write cogently and none outside a chosen few was allowed to serialise an article over two issues. Overall he was a tough taskmaster when it came to his assistants and himself, and that explains how he managed to do so much in his lifetime.

Among the few that passed the several tests was Ranjitha and we are therefore really glad that we got her to fashion this tribute issue. We hope the Chief is very happy with it. We also begin a new year, this being our 31st, and thank our readers, sponsors and donors for encouraging us on this voyage of discovery, of our city.

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